Care, in its multiple meanings, has been the object of reflection in many professional and social areas. The objective of this article is to justify the importance of the care value in the design, preparation and management of public policies.

Before getting into said justification, it seems necessary to explain the conceptual development which has brought me to my current approach.

My commitment to teaching ethics and my feminist militancy have led me to become interested in the contents of the ethics of care and the usefulness of its application in different settings of health and healthcare system. Delving into the study of the ethics of care and its relationship with the bioethics principles allowed me to think about the evolution of the term “care”, and to put forward the four definitions that appear below:

1. Care as a basic human need. The first meaning, the broadest and most common, is when we use the term to refer to the basic human act through which we as persons meet our needs or those of another human being.

2. Care as a nursing professional contribution. This meaning of the term refers to the essential asset (1) of the nursing profession. Thus, we speak about professional care when we name the number of actions which nurses do with and to those persons who are in a situation of lack of autonomy because they don’t have the knowledge, the strength or the will to do it by themselves (using the wording by Henderson’s Model (2)) and with the ultimate aim to promote life.

3. Care as a value. This third way of using the term understands the concept of value as that idea or moral judgment which guides the action. Thus, care is a value that consists in a special sensitivity and interest to acknowledge and meet the needs of other persons, according to their own formulation and promoting their empowerment.

Based on this formulation of care as a value, the first proposal that came up (3) was that said value should be considered a basic ethics prescription, because its joint application with the bioethics value can represent the adequate moral basis to guide the policies, strategies and actions of the healthcare system.

4. Care as a right. This fourth meaning of the term is particularly important for the development of the ethics of care as the basis for public policies. Care as a right is the ability to demand that the needs of persons and groups are met, promoting their autonomy and ensuring respect for their identity.

My experience of eight years in the regulatory politics gradually set the basis to understand that the application of the care value was not only particularly useful in the health and healthcare setting, but also in the set of public policies.

This claim revolves around the conviction that politics is the more effective instrument to change the lives of persons, because:

• It establishes rights, and the circumstances in which those rights can be demanded.
• It guarantees the resources that will allow said rights to be met.

Based on these objectives, politics is understood as the set of personal and social interactions that lead to actions that will allow to establish the rights and the circumstances in which said rights can be demanded, and to guarantee the resources that will allow said rights to be provided (4).

Considering this definition of politics, and in order to counteract its current social devaluation, it seems particularly important to make an effort in order to contribute to its revaluation and delve in its contents. To this aim, there is nothing better than starting from the ideas of Hanna Arendt (5), remembering that for the objectives of politics to be met, this must become the space in which the right to say and the right to be heard will come together, jointly and essentially.

The proposition: To include the care value in all the aspects of public policies

In parallel with the issues that have been presented, I share completely those approaches (6,7) which place the ethics of care as the nuclear element in democracy and its development.

In this sense, the definition of care by Ficher and Tronto (7) is particularly adequate, at the time of working in public policies, given its relational approach. These authors define care as:

“A generic activity which includes everything we do to maintain, perpetuate and repair our world, so that we can live in it as best as possible. This world comprises our body, ourselves, our environment, and the elements that we try to connect into a complex network to support life.”

Based on this definition of care, the definition of care as value, and in order to contribute to the adoption and development of the ethics of care as an essential element for the construction of more equal societies, I suggest considering the inclusion of the care value as the axis for any regulatory action and for the management of public interests.

The main reason for this proposition is that said inclusion will allow any political action to have the following defining characteristics:

• Contextualization.
• The potential personalization of actions and specific resources derived.
• Empowerment.

By “contextualization” I mean the ability by the political action to consider the circumstances of the personal, group, social and environmental settings (the latter is linked to ecological advocacy).

Likewise, I use the term “personalization” as the possibility that the political action, being general and fair, knows how to meet the specific demands by the different persons concerned, promoting their empowerment and being particularly sensitive to those persons in a situation of vulnerability.

Throughout this text I have tried to provide the reasons that justify that the adoption of the care value contributes undoubtedly to contextualize and personalize any political action. Likewise, this adoption is effective in helping to avoid moral negligence (8), which consists in not developing the skills which would allow to cover the needs demonstrated, within the framework of the personal, professional or institutional responsibility, while having the training to do so.

Moral negligence must be addressed particularly in the settings of public policies and institutions, if the objective is to achieve a democracy that ensures the provision of the right to care for all the population.